By IANS,
Bangalore: Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), who finished among the bottom teams for three Indian Premier League (IPL) seasons, made some eye-catching purchases right from the start when they got Gautam Gambhir for a whopping $2.4 million on the opening day auction.
Knight Riders went bidding aggressively, getting Yusuf Pathan, Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee and England’s new sensation Eoin Morgan in a calculated way.
KKR shelled out $7.58mn for eight players as they had not retained any of the players from the last season. They still have $1.42mn to get a couple of fringe players on the second day of the auction.
Royal Challengers Bangalore also went on a spending spree, coughing up $7.95 million on the first day to buy seven players and are left with $1.05mn in their kitty. They had retained only Virat Kohli from the last year’s side.
Deccan Chargers are better-placed to get more players on Sunday as they are still left with $3.5mn — most among the 10 teams.
New teams Kochi and Pune Warriors also pitched in aggressively, spending $6.92mn and $6.87mn and packing their teams with some quality players.
Here’s how the IPL-4 teams stand after the opening day auction which saw 72 players go under the hammer while 16 went unsold.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Gautam Gambhir, Yusuf Pathan, Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin, Shakib Al Hasan, Brett Lee, Eoin Morgan, Manoj Tiwary.
Pune Warriors: Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, Graeme Smith, Tim Paine, Angelo Mathews, Ashish Nehra, Nathan McCullum, Callum Fergusson.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Andrew Symonds, David Jacobs, James Franklin.
Delhi Daredevils: Irfan Pathan, David Warner, Naman Ojha, James Hopes, Morne Morkel, Aaron Finch.
Kochi: Mahela Jayawardene, V.V.S. Laxman, Brendon McCullum, S.Sreesanth, R.P. Singh, Parthiv Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Steven Smith, Muttiah Muralitharan, Ramesh Powar, Brad Hodge.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: AB de Villiers, Dilshan Tillakaratne, Zaheer Khan, Daniel Vettori, Saurabh Tiwary, Dirk Nannes, Cheteshwar Pujara.
Deccan Chargers: Cameron White, Kevin Pietersen, Kumar Sangakkara, J.P. Duminy, Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma, Dale Steyn, Pragyan Ojha, Amit Mishra.
Rajasthan Royals: Ross Taylor, Rahul Dravid, Johan Botha, Paul Collingwood.
King’s XI Punjab: Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh, David Hussey, Dinesh Karthik, Stuart Broad, Abhishek Nayar, Praveen Kumar, Ryan Harris, Piyush Chawla.
Chennai Super Kings: Michael Hussey, Wriddhiman Saha, Dwayne Bravo, Doug Bollinger,
R. Ashwin, S. Badrinath.